Women Smokers at Greater Risk for Colon Cancer?

(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- New research has found that women smokers have a 19 percent increased risk of developing colon cancer than women who have never smoked and men had an eight percent increased risk compared to men who never smoked.

Inger Torhild Gram, MD, PhD, Professor in the Department of Community Medicine at the University of Tromsø in Norway, and her colleagues examined the association between cigarette smoking and colon cancer in a Norwegian cohort of more than 600,000 men and women. They also found that the dose-response association between the number of cigarettes a day, the number of years smoked, number of packs smoked a year, and colon cancer risk is stronger for women than it was for men. “Our study is the first that shows women who smoke less than men still get more colon cancer,” Dr. Gram was quoted as saying.